Irresponsible Spending

July 18, 1955

The other day Rep. Clarence Cannon, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, made a promising analysis of some of the things wrong with our present Federal budget system and then came up with some very unpromising remedies.

At present, he said, Congress can wreck completely the best prepared budget. “Any senator can walk into the Senate Appropriations Committee and put anything in a bill he wants. Then when it gets to conference the senators say: ‘You can’t do anything about that—that’s Senator So-and-So’s item.’ You’d be astounded at what some senators get away with. . . . You can go down the roll and find many members who never vote for a tax [increase] bill but for every appropriation bill. The people must be protected against that sort of statesmanship.”

What then are Congressman Cannon’s proposed remedies? To take away the power of Congress to wreck even the best prepared budget? Not at all. His proposed remedies are two. One is a bill to require the President to submit to Congress a balanced budget each year. This would appear to be quite inflexible and not allow for emergencies or crises. The other remedy is a bill that would abolish the present Budget Bureau under the Executive Department and assign its duties to a new agency operating under Congress.

This second bill is even more puzzling than the first. Chairman Cannon would apparently still require the President to submit a budget, but would deprive him of his chief agency of preparation and control. It would turn the preparation of budgets over to a Congress which, on Cannon’s own testimony, has been so busily engaged in mutual logrolling that it wrecks even the best prepared budget.

Much more promising proposals have been made by the Treasury Department and by the Hoover commission. Secretary Humphrey has proposed that Congress pass individual appropriation bills as at present, but not send them to the White House for signature until the overall total has been tabulated and cuts made to bring it down to the level of expected receipts. The Hoover commission has recommended that Congress stop appropriating enormous sums which may not be spent for several years, and appropriate money only for actual spending in a given fiscal year.

Unfortunately, while both of these proposals have merit, neither goes to the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is that our Federal government has an irresponsible budget system. It is irresponsible because no single official or agency can now be held accountable or responsible for the final result. The President can recommend one set of expenditures; the House can raise them; the Senate can raise the House. This triangular competition in spending favors the localities and the pressure groups and leaves the taxpayer defenseless.

Nearly every other country has a more responsible system. In Great Britain for more than two centuries the wholesome rule has been established that Parliament may reduce but not increase any spending recommendation made by the executive government. This is the ideal. The very minimum requirement to bring us even near a responsible budget would be a constitutional amendment to give the President power to veto individual items in appropriation bills (a power now held by the governors in 37 states). Even better would be provisions such as those in the New York State constitution. These require the legislature to act on the governor’s whole budget before making any appropriations on its own initiative. Such extra appropriations must be in separate bills subject to veto.

If such a reform were adopted, it would still leave room even for the adoption of Congressman Cannon’s suggestions in a modified form. Congress could set up its own budget agency to maintain liaison with the Federal Budget Bureau throughout the year. And Congress could be given explicit power to return to the President any unbalanced budget and recommend that he cut spending to a specified overall sum.